“Suggestions that survive the chewing are passed on to Mike, Pat and Tony for researching and scripting and eventually, if they survive that process, they end up on the screen,” Michael Ingrams said.

The “team,” who work from two small offices looking out over Kingsway in Television House, London, all remember favourite programmes from among the 400 Here and Now shows that have gone out since the show started in November 1961.

Michael Ingrams’ own favourite is the programme in which he “danced” himself off his feet.

“We did a Here and Now to illustrate how dances are launched,” he said. “The dance was the Beeje, a wonderful jazzy number for which Steve Race wrote the music. Although it hasn’t exactly replaced the Twist, it is still going places in its own small way!”

For Huw Thomas not even the Beeje measured up to the night he was able to lavish £250,000 worth of diamonds on his wife!

“We did a programme about diamonds and my wife took part. She was a sort of prop for me to hang these fabulous stones on.

“I knew it wasn’t for real but, all the same, it was a wonderful feeling, recklessly draping her with thousands of pounds worth of diamonds!”

Tony Gray’s favourite programme was one he did on a horse fair at Southall, Middlesex.

“It was one of the most colourful outings I’ve ever been on,” he said.

“The place was teeming with gypsies, rag and bone men, excited children and parents committing themselves to buying their sons and daughters ‘that cute little pony’.”

Huw Thomas, in diving suit, was tricked into going down…

…and here he tries out the Beeje to show how dances are launched

Fellow writer Pat Ward remembers the day he tricked Huw Thomas at the School For Divers, featured by Here and Now.

“I visited the school by myself first,” he said. “I didn’t dare to dive — couldn’t bear the thought of being wrapped up underwater in one of those huge suits — but when I got back to the studio I told Huw that I had dived and that it was a piece of cake!

“Huw wasn’t too keen on the idea, but I re-assured him. ‘It’s nothing,’ I said, ‘you’ll love it down there underwater.’

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Alan Keeling wrote22 March 2018 at 3:45 pm

One member of the Hear & Now team was the late Michael Ingrams, a man of many talents who starred in films such as The Square Ring (1953), Dangerous Voyage (1954) plus an episode of the cinema series, Scotland Yard. Michael also scripted many of the Look at Life cinema shorts and also in 1955 was writer, director and interviewer for an Associated Rediffusion series of 15 minute documentarys called Look in on London.